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22
SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL 2011
SFF.ORG.AU
TAKE ME ON A JOURNEY
23
SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL 2011
TAKE ME ON A JOURNEY
SFF.ORG.AU
POSITION AMONG THE STARS
STAND VAN DE STERREN
FRI 10 JUN 4.35PM EV4
MON 13 JUN 11.30AM DOQ2
The Netherlands | 109 mins | In Indonesian with
English subtitles
Director: Leonard Retel Helmrich | Producers, Screenwriters:
Hetty Naaijkens-Retel Helmrich, Leonard Retel Helmrich |
Distributor: Antidote Films
Cinema vérité filmmaker Leonard Retel Helmrich
has followed the Sjamsuddin family for 12 years,
capturing the changes in their lives and the world
around them. This film, the final in a trilogy, is
also a stand-alone work. The family, comprising
Christian grandmother Rumidjah, her Muslim
sons Bakti and Dwi, their wives and her orphaned
granddaughter Tari, live in the slums of Jakarta. Tari
is about to graduate – a dream long cherished by her
impoverished family – but she’s currently showing
more interest in boys than in books. Helmrich’s
closeness to the family provides us with a fly-on-the-
wall portrait of the three generations. His innovative
camera technique with close-ups of creatures great
and small – as well as long, uninterrupted shots
of Bakti’s exuberant nephew flying through the
alleyways – is both poetic and exquisitely real.
Winner of major prizes at both Sundance and
the International Documentary Film Festival
Amsterdam, Helmrich’s film captures modern
Indonesia in all its complexity: shopping malls and
rice paddies, mosques and cathedrals, privilege and
poverty. JN•
SILENT SOULS
OVSYANKI
SAT 11 JUN 4.15PM DOQ2
THU 16 JUN 4.10PM EV4
Russia | 75 mins | In Russian with English subtitles
AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE
Director: Aleksei Fedorchenko | Screenwriter: Denis Osokin
| Producers: Igor Mishin, Mary Nazari | Cast: Igor Sergeyev,
Yuri Tsurilo, Yuliya Aug | Distributor: Icon Film Distribution
Lyrical, elegiac and stunningly beautiful, Silent Souls
is a transformative work of cinema that intertwines
loss, memory and longing in a funerary ritual that
is as much about a disappeared culture as it is about
the death of a loved one. Aist (Igor Sergeyev) is a
photographer, writer and a descendant of the Merya
people, a Finno-Ugric tribe from central-western
Russia, whose traditions he documents and preserves
in his work. When Tanya, the young wife of his boss
and best friend Miron (Yuri Tsurilo) unexpectedly
dies, the two men prepare her corpse and observe
the tradition of ‘smoking’ – telling intimate stories
about the deceased – whilst travelling with Tanya’s
body to free her soul in the Volga river. Love and
water are the only gods observed by the Merya
and these twin forces – passionate intensity and
undulating flow – permeate the logic of this visually
arresting, totally hypnotic film. CS•
Winner: FIPRESCI Prize (Best Film),
Venice Film Festival
Screens with A Lost and Found Box of
Human Sensation
THU 9 JUN 11.45AM EV4
MON 13 JUN 6.20PM DOQ2
France, Germany, The Netherlands | 91 mins | In French,
German, Dutch and Bassa with English subtitles
AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE
Director, Screenwriter: Ulrich Köhler | Producers: Katrin
Schlösser, Janine Jackowski, Maren Ade | Cast: Pierre
Bokma, Jean-Christophe Folly, Jenny Schily | Sales Agent:
The Match Factory
Ulrich Köhler’s striking film, which won Best
Director at the Berlin Film Festival, roams through
the incongruous terrain of contemporary Africa
like a restless insomniac with eyes wide open. Ebbo
has long been serving in Cameroon as a physician
in a European-funded aid program established to
treat sleeping sickness and is captivated by both the
place and the colonial-like privileges bestowed upon
him. His wife Vera wants to return to Germany to
rejoin their teenage daughter who is studying there
and who detests the contradictions she has grown
to perceive in her father’s assimilation. Aligning two
characters in a narrative manoeuvre that is both
slippery and lucid, and mirroring the two distinct
phases of the titular disease, the film then shifts
focus to Alex, a French-born doctor of Congolese
background. Alex is sent from Paris to evaluate the
aid program and finds the encounter with Africa
disorienting and uneasy. CS•
Winner: Best Director, Berlin Film Festival
SLEEPING SICKNESS
SCHLAFKRANKHEIT
‘We come
away from the
experience not
quite sure how
to classify what
we’ve just been
watching – but
certain that it is
something rare
and strange.’
SCREEN INTERNATIONAL ON LE QUATTRO VOLTE
Sleeping Sickness
ON THE ICE
The premieres of two
new films created
from up-loaded
content give a glimpse
of a powerful new
direction in cinema.
SFF at Message Sticks Film Festival
12-15 May 2011
YouTube has revolutionised and democratised the moving image
around the world. It was instrumental in creating both Life In A Day
and WE WERE HERE: The Map My Summer Film– the latter of which
is a unique collaboration between Screen Australia, YouTube and Syd-
ney Film Festival. Visit YouTube’s Map My Summer channel (http://
www.youtube.com/user/mapmysummer) and check out the remarkable
range of material created from coast to coast to enhance your under-
standing of this unique filmmaking adventure.
Sydney Film Festival is honoured to partner with Message
Sticks Film Festival at Sydney Opera House to present
the Australian premiere of On the Ice, the engrossing and
suspenseful feature-film debut by director Andrew Okpeaha
MacLean. Fresh from Sundance and the Berlin Film Festival,
where it was awarded both the coveted Crystal Bear Award
and Best First Feature.
Two teenage boys who have grown up like brothers go about
their lives in the comfortable claustrophobia of an isolated
Alaskan town. Early one morning, on a seal hunt with another
teenager, an argument between the three boys quickly escalates
into tragedy. Bonded by their dark secret, the two best friends
are forced to create one fabrication after another in order to survive.
MESSAGE STICKS
USER GENERATED
SAT 11 JUN 8.35PM EV4
Australia | 25 mins | In No
WORLD PREMIERE
Director: Amy Gebhardt | Distributor:
Premiering with Life in a Day is the short film that
was inspired by it, WE WERE HERE. Australians
were invited by Screen Australia to upload their
videos shot this summer to the YouTube Map My
Summer portal. Dr George Miller selected Amy
Gebhardt to direct a film using the uploaded footage
and was on hand as project mentor. The result
reflects our collective experience of summer and its
special place in our cultural identity. CS•
WE WERE HERE
THE MAP MY SUMMER FILM
SAT 11 JUN 8.35PM EV4
UK | 95 mins | In English, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese,
Ukrainian, Indonesian, Balinese, Hindi, Italian, Russian,
Arabic, Bengali, Creole, Vietnamese, Quechua, German,
Masai, Dutch, Catalan, Tajik, Pashto and Umbundu with
English subtitles
AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE
Directors: Kevin Macdonald, YouTube contributors |
Producer: Liza Marshall | Distributor: Tranmission Films
For this ground-breaking user-generated project,
Academy Award®-winning director Kevin
Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland,Touching
the Void) teams up with YouTube and executive
producers Ridley Scott and Tony Scott to create a
feature-length documentary shot in a single day - 24
July 2010 - from thousands of hours of footage
submitted by people all over the world. CS•
Screens with WE WERE HERE
LIFE IN A DAY
FREE EVENT
TIME & VENUE
LOCATION: Sydney Opera House
Book online sydneyoperahouse.com
DATE:
Friday 13 May, 7pm
SUPPORTED BY: